Sublime
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the Edward Bonaventure.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company

At last, the Gloucester caught up to the Pearl, and its officers revealed why they’d been so wary. Several days earlier, while they had been looking for the squadron, they had detected five men-of-war, one of which had hoisted a broad red pendant, signifying that it was Anson’s flagship. In excitement, the Pearl had raced toward the fleet, but
... See moreDavid Grann • The Wager
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
T.S. Eliot • The Essential T.S. Eliot
George Melville would serve as the Jeannette’s engineer. Said to be distantly related to the great author, Melville was an improvisational genius with machines—a greasy-fingered savant who seemed most at home among thumping boilers and sharp blasts of steam. The engineer, thirty-eight years old, had a booming voice, a stout physique, and an
... See moreHampton Sides • In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
Briefly Carleton considered the other man, of whom he’d made such a study he might have been appointed professor of Thomas Studies at the University of Essex. He knew, for example, that Thomas was a confirmed bachelor, as they say, never seen in the company of a beautiful young person or a stately older one; that he had about him the melancholy
... See moreSarah Perry • Enlightenment
At the advent of each individual into this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into
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